From the author of

From the author of

When I ask what type of things people want to learn about digital
photography, just about everyone mentions removing glare and reflections from
glasses. Even as popular as those anti-reflective coatings have become,
you’ll still find people who don’t have that type of coating on
their glasses. You probably won’t notice glare or reflections when
you’re taking the photo, but later on, believe me, you’ll see it.
Here’s how to fix the problem.

Method 1: Handling Overall Glare

Use this technique if your photo is easy to work with and there is a reflection over all of the glass in the glasses.

For this example, I have a photo with an even reflection over all of the glass in the glasses (see Figure 1). With this problem, you’re in luck, because it’s fairly simple to fix. The next method that I’ll show you is a bit more involved.

First, we need to make a selection of the inside of the glasses. I like the Selection Brush for this purpose, so get that tool from the Toolbox (see Figure 2) or just press A to get it. (The Selection Brush tool is nested with the Magic Selection Brush in the Toolbox.)

The Selection Brush works just like a regular brush does—you paint with it by clicking and dragging with your mouse. Each brush stroke creates a selection. Go ahead and start painting inside the glasses here to select them (see Figure 3).

When the Levels dialog opens, drag the black point slider on the left toward the right (see Figure 6), until the area inside the glasses begins to match the area around the glasses. If you can’t get it perfect, try dragging the middle (midtones) slider to the left or right a little, and that should get you there. Click OK and you’re done (see Figure 7).